Schools: What Works

Once a week, Washington, D.C., parents of preschool and
elementary-school children gather at a busy McDonald's restaurant to
learn how to reinforce a child's reading and writing skills. The
program, called "Kids' Primetime," has been organized by the Basic
Skills Parent Project of Catholic University's school of education. The
instructors in the program are professionals in children's literature
from the local public-library system, who read to the parents' children
and help them write stories and lyrics to songs.

Catholic University, the division of children's services of the D.C.
Public Libraries, Reading Is Fundamental (rif) of D.C., and the
neighborhood McDonald's restaurant all contribute to the program, each
absorbing the costs of its own participation.

The cooperative effort has two goals: to teach parents how to work
at home to strengthen the literacy skills of their children; and to
provide a monitored, yet casual, setting in which young children can
practice reading and writing.

The trained librarians who run the sessions try to illustrate for
the parents techniques of reading to their children and using "good"
literature to enhance their children's informal education.

They recommend that parents schedule a story-reading time that is
followed by interpretive questions, and they suggest, in addition, that
parents have their children make grocery lists, read maps, use the
telephone directory, and mark the family calendar.

"We're trying to show that books and learning are not limited to
libraries, schools, and day-care centers," says a staff member of the
program.

Water, water, everywhere ... but not enough is taught about it in
schools, say the members of a consortium of educators and research
scientists in Ohio.

So, to counter what they call the traditional "land-oriented
philosophy" of teaching about the world's water resources, the scholars
and scientists have devised a series of interdisciplinary workbooks
that teachers in a variety of subject fields can use to draw their
students' attention to the earth's bodies of water and the way
societies use them.

The group developed 23 such supplementary study units, which they
call "investigations," under a three-year grant starting in 1977. Each,
they say, is "designed to take a concept or idea from the existing
school curriculum and develop it in an oceanic and Great Lakes
context." A cooperative effort of Ohio State University's college of
education and school of natural resources, the Ohio Department of
Natural Resources, the Ohio Department of Education, and the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the program now distributes the
materials in Ohio and trains teachers to use them.

One of the most popular units is "The Great Lakes Triangle," which
uses weather charts, ship models, and plotted bathymetric contours of a
lake to investigate ship and airplane disasters.

In another unit, called "It's Everyone's Sea: Or Is It?," students
study the War of 1812 dispute between the U.S. and Great Britain
involving Lake Erie. They also role-play representatives of eight
countries in a simulated Law of the Sea Conference.

Other frequently used "investigations" are "Erosion Along Lake
Erie," "Getting To Know Your Local Fish," "Shipping: The World
Connection," and "Oil Spill!"

According to the program's founder, Victor J. Mayer, professor of
science education and geology at Ohio State and education coordinator
of the state's Sea Grant program, school systems are encouraged to
reproduce the materials for their own use.

The major goal of the interdisciplinary workbooks, he adds, is to
promote "careful, planned use of oceanic and fresh-water resources."
These activity units may be taught during art, geography, history,
language-arts, mathematics, music, science, and social-studies
classes.

Students at the McConnelsville-Malta (Ohio) Junior High School who
work diligently at their studies and receive no unsatisfactory marks
for their behavior reap an atypical reward: They are allowed to play
during school hours in a special "student honors room."

The room is open during the last period of the day when most
students are in a required study hall; it contains ping-pong tables,
card tables, and a record player.

Designed, according to the school's principal, to encourage 7th- and
8th-grade students to strive academically and to acquire good habits of
conduct, the program is available only to students who receive A's,
B's, and C's for the preceding grading period. Occasionally, a student
who earns a few D's will qualify, but only if the teachers believe he
or she is "working to capacity."

An academically accomplished student who receives "detentions" for
minor discipline infractions is not eligible for this bonus recreation
time. Students pay for their infractions by losing five minutes of
recess for each.

The student council manages the facility and a teacher is present to
monitor the activities. According to school officials, no students have
been expelled from the room for misbehavior.

Word of innovative, effective programs may be sent to SCHOOLS: WHAT
WORKS, Education Week, 1333 New Hampshire Ave., N.W., #560, Washington,
D.C. 20036. (When writing to others for more details, please include a
self-addressed, stamped envelope.)

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